Read Eating Memories for Free Online Page B

that the shot Jean had given Larry was whiskey. He didn’t want the bosses to talk to Larry the way they’d talked to Martingale.
    “Help me, Sweet Tooth,” Jean said.
    He came over to her. His fingers pulled at the legs of his trousers.
    “Get him up, okay? And put him in one of the chairs.”
    “Larry’s sick, too,” Sweet Tooth said.
    “Yeah. Larry’s real sick, honey. Pick him up under the arms and don’t let his legs drag the floor.”
    The room was messy, all red and stinking. Larry and Dunaway had made it that way, To Sweet Tooth it felt nasty, like when his hands were dirty and he needed to wash them. He grabbed Larry under the arms and carried him to the wall.
    “Sweetie? Here. Right here.”
    Sweet Tooth walked past Jean to the door. His right hand pulled at the lever that said EMERGENCY EXIT.
    “No!” Jean shouted. She pulled at Sweet Tooth’s jacket.
    Larry twisted in Sweet Tooth’s arms trying to get away, but he wasn’t strong enough. Not when he was drunk. “Don’t open the door, okay, Hummer?” Larry said, “Hummer, please! Jean! For God’s sake do something!”
    It was hard opening the door when Jean got in the way like that and Larry fought him. Sweet Tooth tried to flip the lock without hurting her, but his fingers slipped and he dug gouges in the back of her hand. She didn’t take her hand away.
    “Sit down, Sweet Tooth! Sweet Tooth!” Jean screamed. “Look at me! Look at me, damn it!”
    He looked at her then. She shouldn’t use words like that. It made the room feel dirty some more.
    “You’ll hurt me if you open the door, Sweet Tooth,” she told him. Her face was very close. Larry stopped struggling a minute and just lay like a pile of heavy rags in Sweet Tooth’s arms. “You’ll hurt me real bad if you do that.”
    His hand slipped off the lock.
    “Set him down now. In the chair.”
    “He’s sick. He needs out,” Sweet Tooth said with a frown in his voice. Jean didn’t look like she wanted to understand. He put Larry down in the chair the way Jean had said.
    “Don’t get mad at him,” Larry told her. His lips got in the way of his words. “It’s just instinct Get the dead and sick out of the hive. He can’t help what he is.”
    “It’s not fair that they’re all like that, and they still create them. It’s not fair to us or to them,” Jean said. She looked at Sweet Tooth before she looked away. Sweet Tooth twisted the ends of his jacket in his hands because he knew he had just done something bad, and he didn’t know what that thing was.
    “Come here,” Larry said, holding his hand out to him. Sweet Tooth came over and sat in the chair next to his friend. “Don’t cry, ” Larry told him. He put his hand on Sweet Tooth’s head. “Don’t cry, Hummer. Everything’s all right now.”
    “Sick,” Sweet Tooth said.
    “I know. But don’t open the door. Okay?”
    “Okay,’” Sweet Tooth said. He thought Larry and Dunaway should be outside the ship, but if Larry and Jean didn’t want it, he’d just ignore that flippy feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was simple. It was so simple it made him happy again.
    Larry turned to Jean. “How bad is it?”
    “Reactor rupture in the navigation cabin . . .”
    Blink. Larry’s eyes were on Sweet Tooth again.
    “He’s okay,” Jean said. “We got him out before the steam started to escape. Probably a sauna in there now.”
    “Rads?”
    “Building,”
    “Building,” Sweet Tooth said. He hated it when he wasn’t part of the talking. He liked the talking. Sometimes when they talked, he’d hum Iittle tunes Jean had taught him: Farmer in the Dell” and “Jingle Bells.” That’s why Larry called him “Hummer.”
    “So what about the holograph?” Larry asked. “Without Sweet Tooth in there, we can’t use the holograph. How do we know where we are?”
    “Sweet Tooth knows,” Jean said.
    That made Sweet Tooth feel proud. Larry’s hand came down on his cheek, but it wasn’t working real